Autumn a-1 Read online

  ‘I agree,’ the voice interrupted again. ‘But why stop here? There are a thousand and one better places to go, why stay here? What makes you any safer here than if you were lying on the dotted white line in the middle of the Stanhope Road?’

  Carl shuffled around so that he could see through the mass of heads and bodies and identify the speaker. It was Michael, the bloke who had cooked the soup earlier.

  ‘We don’t know what’s outside…’ Ralph began.

  ‘But we’ve got to go out there eventually, you accept that?’

  He stammered and fiddled with his glasses again.

  ‘Yes, but…’

  ‘Look, Ralph, I’m not trying to make this any more difficult than it already is. We’ve got to leave here to get the supplies we need. All I’m saying is why bother delaying it and why bother coming back? Why not go somewhere else?’

  Ralph couldn’t answer. It was obvious to Carl and, probably, to pretty much everyone else, that the reason Ralph didn’t want to go outside was the same reason Stuart Jeffries had admitted to wanting to stay trapped in the hall earlier. They were both scared.

  ‘We could try and find somewhere else,’ he began, hesitantly, ‘but we’ve got a shelter here which is secure and…’

  ‘And cold and dirty and uncomfortable,’ Carl said quickly.

  ‘Okay, it’s not ideal but…’

  ‘But what?’ pressed Michael. ‘It seems to me that we can pretty much have our pick of everywhere and everything at the moment.’

  The room fell silent for a few seconds. Ralph suddenly sat up straight and pushed his glasses back up his nose again. He seemed to have found a reason to justify staying put.

  ‘But what about the music and the fire?’ he said, much more animated. ‘Stuart and Jack managed to bring us all here by lighting the fire and playing music. If we did it again we might find more survivors. There might already be people on their way to us.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Michael. ‘No-one’s arrived here since me. If anyone else had heard the music they’d have been here by now. I agree with what you’re saying, but again, why here? Why not find somewhere better to stop, get ourselves organised there and light a bloody big bonfire right in the middle of the road outside?’

  Carl agreed.

  ‘He’s right. We should get a beacon or something sorted, but let’s get ourselves safe and secure first.’

  ‘A new beacon somewhere else is going to be seen by more people, isn’t it?’ asked Sandra Goodwin, a fifty year-old housewife. ‘And isn’t that what we want?’

  ‘Bottom line here,’ Michael said, changing his tone and raising his voice slightly so that everyone suddenly turned and gave him their full attention, ‘is that we’ve got to look after ourselves first of all and then start to think about anyone else who might possibly still be alive.’

  ‘But shouldn’t we start looking for other survivors now?’ someone else asked.

  ‘I don't think we should,’ he replied, ‘I agree that we should get a beacon or something going, but there’s no point in wasting time actively looking for other people yet. If there are others then they’ll have more chance of finding us than we’ll have finding them.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Sandra asked.

  ‘Stands to reason,’ he grunted. ‘Does anyone know how many people used to live in this city?’

  A couple of seconds silence followed before someone answered.

  ‘About a quarter of a million people. Two hundred thousand or something like that.’

  ‘And there are twenty-six of us in here.’

  ‘So?’ pressed an uncomfortable looking Ralph, trying desperately to find a way back into the conversation.

  ‘So what does that say to you?’

  Ralph shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘It says to me,’ Michael continued, ‘that looking for anyone else would be like looking for a needle in a haystack.’

  Carl nodded in agreement and picked up where Michael had left off.

  ‘What’s outside?’ he asked quietly.

  No response.

  He looked from left to right at the faces gathered around him. He glanced across the room and made eye contact with Michael.

  ‘I’ll tell you,’ he said quietly, ‘there’s nothing. The only people I’ve seen moving since all of this began are sitting in this hall. But we don’t know if it’s over. We don’t know if we’re going to wake up tomorrow. We don’t know if what happened to the rest of them will happen to us.’

  Ralph interrupted.

  ‘Come on,’ he protested, ‘stop talking like that. You’re not doing anyone any good talking like that…’

  ‘I’m trying to make a point…’

  Michael spoke again.

  ‘Since this all started have any of you heard a plane or helicopter pass overhead?’

  Again, no response.

  ‘The airport’s five miles south of here, if there were any planes flying we’d have heard them. There’s a train station that links the city to the airport and the track runs along the other side of the Stanhope Road. Anyone heard a train?’

  Silence.

  ‘So how many people do you think this has affected?’ Carl asked cautiously.

  ‘If this was the only region affected,’ Michael answered, ‘logic says that help would have arrived by now.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ a man called Tim asked quietly.

  Michael shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘I guess I’m saying that this is a national disaster at the very least. The lack of air traffic makes me think that it could be worse than that.’

  An awkward murmur of stark realisation rippled across the group.

  ‘Michael’s right,’ Emma said. ‘This thing spread so quickly that there’s no way of knowing what kind of area’s been affected. It was so fast that I doubt whether anything could have been done to prevent it spreading before it was too late.’

  ‘But this area might be too infected to travel to,’ Tim said, his voice strained and frightened. ‘They might have sealed Northwich off.’

  ‘They might have,’ Michael agreed. ‘But I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?’

  Tim said nothing.

  ‘So what do we do?’ an unsure female voice asked from the middle of the group.

  ‘I think we should get away from here,’ Michael said. ‘Look, if I’m completely honest I’m just thinking about myself here and the rest of you should make your own minds up. It’s just that I’m not prepared to sit here and wait for help when I’m pretty sure that it’s never going to arrive. I don’t want to sit trapped in here surrounded by thousands of bloody bodies. I want out of the city. I want to get away from here, find somewhere safe, make myself comfortable and then just sit and wait and see what happens next.’

  8

  Michael spent the first five and a half hours of the following morning trying to find somewhere comfortable to sleep. When he finally managed to lose consciousness he only slept for forty-five minutes before waking up feeling worse than ever. He’d been lying on the cold hard floor and every bone in his tired body ached. He wished he hadn’t bothered.

  The main hall was freezing cold. He was fully clothed and had a thick winter jacket wrapped around him but it was still bitter. He hated everything at the moment, but he quickly decided that he hated this time of day most of all. It was dark and in the early morning shadows he thought he could see a thousand shuffling shapes where there were none. Much as he tried he couldn’t think about anything other than what had happened to the world outside because absolutely everything had been affected. He couldn’t bear to think about his family because he didn’t know if they were still alive. He couldn’t think about his work and career because they didn’t exist anymore. He couldn’t think about going out with his friends at the weekend because those friends were most probably dead too, lying face down on a street corner somewhere. He couldn’t think about his favourite television programme because there were no telev
ision channels broadcasting and no electricity. He couldn’t even hum the tune to his favourite songs because it made him remember. It hurt too much to think about memories and emotions that, although only gone for a few days, now seemed to be lost forever. In desperation he simply stared into the darkness and tried hard to concentrate on listening to the silence. He thought that by deliberately filling his head with nothing the pain would go away. It didn’t work. It didn’t matter which direction he stared in, all that he could see were the faces of other equally desperate survivors staring back at him through the darkness. He was not alone with his painful insomnia.

  The first few orange rays of the morning sun were beginning to edge cautiously into the room. The light trickled in slowly through a series of small rectangular windows which were positioned at equal distances along the longest wall of the main hall. Each one of the windows was protected on the outside by a layer of heavy-duty wire mesh and each window had also been covered in random layers of spray paint by countless vandals through the years. Michael found it strange and unnerving to think that every single one of those vandals was almost certainly dead now.

  He didn’t want to move, but he knew that he had to. He was desperate to use the toilet but had to summon up the courage to actually get up and go there. It was too cold and he didn’t want to wake any of the lucky few survivors who were actually managing to sleep. Problem was the hall was so quiet that no matter how careful he was in his heavy boots every single footstep he took would probably be heard by everyone. And when he got there it wouldn’t be much better. The toilets didn’t flush anymore because the water supply had dried up. The group had started to use a small chemical toilet which someone had found in the Scouts’ supplies. Even though it had been in use for less than a day it already stank. A noxious combination of strong chemical detergent and stagnating human waste.

  He couldn’t put it off any longer, he had to go. He tried unsuccessfully to make the short journey seem a little easier by convincing himself that the sooner he was up the sooner it would be done and he would be back. Strange that in the face of the enormity of the disaster outside, even the easiest everyday task suddenly seemed an impossible mountain to climb.

  Grabbing hold of a nearby wooden bench with his outstretched right hand, he hauled himself up onto his unsteady feet. For a few seconds he did nothing except stand still and try to get his balance. He shivered in the cold and then took a few tentative stumbling steps through the half-light towards the toilets. He would be twenty-nine in three weeks time. This morning he felt at least eighty-nine.

  Outside the toilet he paused and took a deep breath before opening the door. He glanced to his right and, through a small square window to the side of the main entrance door, he was sure that he could see something outside.

  For a moment he froze.

  He could definitely see movement.

  Ignoring the nagging pain in his bladder, Michael pressed his face hard against the dirty glass and peered out through the layers of spray paint and mesh. He squinted into the light.

  There it was again.

  Instantly forgetting about the temperature, his aching bones and his full bladder, he unlocked the door and wrenched it open. He burst out into the cold morning and sprinted the length of the car park, stopping at the edge of the road. There, on the other side of the street, he saw a man walking slowly away from the community centre.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ a voice asked suddenly, startling Michael. It was Stuart Jeffries. He and another three survivors had heard Michael open the door and, naturally concerned, had followed him outside.

  ‘Over there,’ Michael replied, pointing towards the figure in the near distance and taking a few slow steps forward. ‘Hey,’ he shouted, hoping to attract his attention before he disappeared from view. ‘Hey you!’

  No response.

  Michael glanced at the other four survivors before turning back and running after the unknown man. Within a few seconds he had caught up as the solitary figure was moving at a very slow and deliberate pace.

  ‘Hey, mate,’ he shouted cheerfully, ‘didn’t you hear me?’

  Still no response.

  The man continued walking away.

  ‘Hey,’ Michael said again, this time a little louder, ‘are you all right? I saw you walking past and…’

  As he spoke he reached out and grabbed hold of the man’s arm. As soon as he applied any force the figure stopped walking instantly. Other than that it didn’t move. It simply stopped and stood still, seeming to not even be aware that Michael was there. Perhaps the lack of any response was as a result of shock. Maybe what had happened to the rest of the world had been too much for this poor soul to take.

  ‘Leave him,’ shouted one of the other survivors. ‘Get back inside.’

  Michael wasn’t listening. Instead he slowly turned the man around until he was looking directly into his face.

  ‘Fuck…’ was all he could say as he stared deep into the cold, glazed eyes of a corpse. It defied all logic, but there was absolutely no doubt in his suddenly terrified mind that the man standing in front of him was dead. His skin was taut and yellowed and, like all the others, he had traces of dark, dried blood around his mouth, chin and throat.

  Repulsed and in shock, Michael let go of the man’s arm and stumbled backwards. He tripped and fell and then watched from the gutter as the figure staggered off again, still moving desperately slowly as if it had lead in its shoes.

  ‘Michael,’ Jeffries yelled from the entrance to the car park. ‘Get back inside now, we’re closing the door.’

  Michael dragged himself back up to his feet and sprinted towards the others. As he approached he could see more figures moving in the distance. It was obvious by their slow, forced movements that, like the first man he’d seen, these people weren’t survivors either.

  By the time he reached the car park the others had already disappeared back into the community hall. He was vaguely aware of them yelling at him to come inside but in his disbelief, confusion and bewilderment their fear and panic failed to register. He stood staring out towards the main road, preoccupied by the impossible sight he now saw in front of him.

  About a third of the bodies were moving. Roughly one in three of the corpses that had littered the streets around the community centre had become mobile again. Had they not been dead to start with? Had they just been in a coma or something similar? A thousand unanswerable questions began flooding into his mind.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, get inside!’ yelled another one of the survivors from the hall, their voice hoarse with fear.

  As if to prove a point, the corpse on the ground nearest to Michael began to move. Beginning at the outermost tip of the fingers on one outstretched hand, the body started to stretch and to tremble. As he stared in silent incredulity, the fingers began to claw at the ground and then, seconds later, the entire hand was moving. The movement spread steadily along one arm and then, with an almighty shudder, the body lifted itself up from the ground. It tripped and stumbled as it raised itself up onto its unsteady feet. Once upright it simply staggered away, passing within a metre of where Michael stood. The bloody thing didn’t even seem to realise that he was there.

  Terrified, he turned and ran back inside.

  It took less than thirty seconds for the news to spread to all the survivors. Carl Henshawe, refusing to believe what he’d heard, clambered out onto area of flat roof that he’d stood on last night.

  It was true. As incredible as it seemed, some of the bodies were moving.

  Carl stood and surveyed the same desperate scene he’d witnessed less than twelve hours earlier and saw that many of the cold and twisted corpses he’d seen had disappeared. He looked down at the place on the cold ground where the boy with the broken neck had died.

  There was nothing. He had gone.

  9

  Almost an hour passed before anyone dared to move.

  The survivors, already shell-shocked and beaten by all that they had
been through, stood together in terror and disbelief and tried to come to terms with the morning’s events. Surprisingly it was Ralph, the solicitor who had seemed so authoritative and keen to take control last night, who appeared to be having the most trouble accepting what he had seen and heard today. He stood in the centre of the room alongside Paul Garner (an overweight and middle-aged estate agent), struggling to persuade Emma, Carl, Michael and Kate James (a thirty-nine year old primary school teacher) not to open the door and go back outside.

  ‘But we have to go out, Ralph,’ Emma said, calmly and quietly. ‘We’ve got to try and find out what’s going on.’

  ‘I’m not interested,’ the flustered and frightened man snapped. ‘I don’t care what’s happening. There’s no way I’m going to go out there and risk…’

  ‘Risk what?’ Michael interrupted. ‘No-one’s asking you to go outside, are they?’

  ‘Opening that door is enough of a bloody risk in itself,’ Garner muttered anxiously. He chewed on the fingers of his left hand as he spoke. ‘Keep it shut and keep them out.’

  ‘We can’t take any chances by exposing ourselves to those things…’ Ralph protested.

  ‘Things?’ Emma repeated, her tone suddenly venomous and agitated. ‘Those things are people you selfish shit. Bloody hell, your friends and family could be out there…’

  ‘Those bodies have been lying dead on the ground for days!’ he yelled, his face suddenly just inches from hers.

  ‘How do you know they were dead?’ Michael asked, perfectly seriously and calmly. ‘Did you check them all? Did you check any of them for a pulse before you shut yourself away in here?’

  ‘You know as well as I do that…’

  ‘Did you?’ he asked again. Ralph shook his head. ‘And have you ever seen a dead body walk before?’

  This time Ralph didn’t answer. He turned away and leant against the nearest wall.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Garner cursed, ‘of course we’ve never seen fucking dead bodies walking, but…’

  ‘But what?’